There are two general approaches to Internet radio. In the first approach, the programs to be broadcast on an Internet radio station are prerecorded and stored on disk. Listeners can connect to the radio station's archives and pull up any program and download it for listening. The second approach to Internet radio involves streaming live over the Internet. Some stations broadcast over the air and over the Internet simultaneously, but there are increasingly many stations that are Internet only.
Internet radio programming offers a wide spectrum of broadcast genres, particularly in music. The cost of getting “on the air” is less for an Internet broadcaster, and Internet radio can appeal to “micro-communities” of listeners focused on special music or interests.
Internet radio, however, is not limited to audio. An Internet radio broadcast may be accompanied by photos, graphics, text, and links, as well as interactivity, such as message boards and chat rooms. This allows a listener to do more than simply listen to a radio station. For example, a listener who hears an advertisement for a computer printer may order that printer through a link on the Internet radio broadcast website. It is possible for the relationship between advertisers and consumers to become more interactive on Internet radio broadcasts.
For quite some time, the only way to obtain radio broadcasts over the Internet was through a personal computer. However, it is generally envisioned that wireless connectivity will feed Internet broadcasts to car radios, PDAs, cell phones, and the like. The next generation of wireless devices will greatly expand the reach and convenience of Internet radio.
Currently a number of Internet radio services exist. For example, AOL supports the Radio@AOL service, which has a number of Internet radio stations. As another example, Radio@Netscape also supports multiple Internet radio stations. The RealOne player supports a variety of free and superpass radio channels. The Windows Media player has a radio tuner which allows tuning into number of radio stations.
An Internet radio station typically sends metadata information about the currently playing content (e.g., song, news program, sports program, etc.) to the client. Some Internet radio services also send brief information about the upcoming content on the current radio station. Other currently supported features include the ability for a user to mouse-over a radio station in the station list to find out the name of the currently playing song on that station.
In view of the foregoing, benefits may be realized by systems and methods for implementing a metadata station for an Internet radio service.